Puerto Rican film claims the Navy turned Vieques into a cancer hotspot

Los Angeles Times

29-03-2025

For over six decades, the Navy occupied the Puerto Rican island of Vieques, off the coast of the main territory, to carry out military exercises. When it finally left in 2003, locals alleged that it failed to follow proper cleaning protocols, either opting for dangerous open detonation to get rid of old bombs or simply leaving behind munitions and toxic waste.
'The U.S. has paid no attention to the issue,' filmmaker Glorimar Marrero in Spanish claimed during a recent videoconference interview with De Los. 'For example, the Navy said it would take care of cleaning the water in Vieques and that hasn't happened yet.'
Marrero's emotionally charged and politically relevant drama 'The Fishbowl' ('La Pecera') — playing in select theaters until Sunday and coming soon to video on demand — explores the human consequences of these activities. It follows Noelia (Isel Rodriguez), a young artist from Vieques who has cancer. After her illness metastasizes, making her chances of survival slim, she decides to return to the island, initially to spend time with her mother, but eventually she joins the cleanup efforts despite her increasingly frail physical condition.
The director's debut feature has already made history as the first Puerto Rican film nominated at the Goya Awards (Spain's equivalent to the Oscars) for best Ibero-American film, and the first to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival back in 2023. But while the significance of these victories of visibility can't be overstated, 'The Fishbowl' offers only a glimpse into the injustices that the Puerto Rican people continue to endure.
'It's great that in this moment of struggle, because of what's happening at the presidential level in the U.S., we can show the film in these cities so the population can learn about what's happening in our country and about the films we make in Puerto Rico,' Marrero says about her film finally getting a theatrical release in the U.S.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Since you are originally from the main island of Puerto Rico, how did your relationship with Vieques develop?
When I was in college, a detonation of a bomb killed David Sanes Rodríguez, a Vieques resident who was working at one of the U.S. Navy bases. This started a huge social movement. I was very attentive to what was happening in Vieques and participated in activism in the civil movement that resulted in a halt to the detonations. That was a story very close to me. When I began researching for my feature film, I had already decided to focus on colorectal cancer because it was the disease my mother had experienced, but I didn't want to do it in Barranquitas, the town where I'm from, because it would have been too biographical. I asked myself, 'What matters to me as much as my town?' And then I say, 'Vieques.'
Prior to 'The Fishbowl,' you made a short film titled 'Biopsia' about the experiences of women in Vieques. How was this useful to prepare for 'The Fishbowl'?
It was during my initial investigation on the island municipality that I discovered the history of what happens to women there and the process they have to follow after their mammograms to get breast biopsies in San Juan. I used that short film to prepare for 'The Fishbowl,' because at the time, I was only the screenwriter on the project and didn't necessarily have a body of work as a director, so I directed 'Biopsia' to test myself and make sure I was capable of taking on directing a feature film. And that's how I continued the research and developed the narrative arc of 'The Fishbowl.'
What did your research entail in order to get a full picture of the consequences of the military activities there?
It first consisted of collecting the local oral history and the memories of the inhabitants of the island of Vieques regarding the time the U.S. Navy was there, all those decades of detonations and the recollections of different generations. There were the stories of people who lost their lands because the civilian population was displaced and concentrated on one-quarter of the island, leaving three-quarters for military exercises. I wanted to know what it was like to live so close to the military exercises, what it sounded like, how people acted. People would tell me about how their house shook or how, if you were outside and heard the detonations, everyone acted as if it were so normal. Then there were the stories of illnesses. There are families in which everyone has died of cancer. Vieques is one of the places with the highest incidence of cancer in the entire Puerto Rican archipelago. But there are also many rare diseases because there is contamination with mercury or uranium.
Since the U.S. has neglected to take full responsibility of the cleanup, it seems, based on your film, that local residents have taken it upon themselves to restore their island.
I also discovered how the current cleanup is being done by viequenses themselves, who are risking their health. While I stayed in the central character's point of view, the character of Noelia's mother is one of those locals cleaning what was left behind. There are viequenses who dive in the water and document and publicize what they find so people know that, even though the U.S. Navy stopped the detonations, the pollution is still present and has been neglected. All this research also led me to delve into the nature, the sounds and the landscapes of this island, which is a paradise and super photogenic. That helped us tell the story of the crisis in the political relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States.
How do you think the situation in Vieques exemplifies the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States?
It is a direct snapshot of an unequal political relationship in which the Puerto Rican population is considered second- or even third-class citizens. As a colony, we do not have the same rights, and we are also neglected as a nation. I personally believe in Puerto Rico's sovereignty, because the colonial relationship has always been unequal. There has never been justice in that relationship. There has been a bond of oppression, of violence, of human rights violations. Puerto Rico was also a guinea pig in the development of the birth control pill and in the Agent Orange tests. There's also how they use our country for cheap labor with incentives for U.S. corporations — that's a very long story. The U.S. has always exploited Puerto Rican resources and ignored our human rights. There has never been a healthy relationship between the empire and the colony.
On a more practical note, how difficult is it to make films in Puerto Rico from a financial standpoint?
This is another snapshot of this disproportionate relationship with the United States. Currently, there's a tax credit that offers 40% for foreign productions, which is what Netflix, Amazon, Sony and Disney use, for example. And there's a sector of the Puerto Rican filmmaking community that offers services to these productions. Then there are the independent filmmakers like me, who, if we were to apply for the tax credit, would be entitled to an additional 15%, a tax credit of 55%. But the problem is coming with the 45% gap, which isn't necessarily money that exists in Puerto Rico, and that's why we have to opt for co-productions with other countries; in my case it was with Spain.
'The Fishbowl' is the first Puerto Rican feature to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Were you surprised that your film finally broke through?
Our Spanish producers fought so that Sundance would consider our film for the world dramatic competition, and not alongside the U.S.-produced films, which is what had usually happened. They would consider us for the U.S. section and our chances were significantly reduced. By being a co-production between Spain and Puerto Rico, there was a stronger justification for them to consider it for the world dramatic competition, and we made it. Politically, that helped us a lot, since the rest of the festivals put us in Ibero-American competitions. They recognized us as a country, including the Goya Awards. In a small way, 'The Fishbowl' is also sowing a seed to reiterate that we are a nation.
Since 2012, Puerto Rico has not been allowed to submit a film for the Oscars in the international feature category. Are Puerto Rican filmmakers pushing for this to change?
We sent a letter complaining about the 2012 rule change to the academy, and they responded with a very standard template stating that the rule stands. However, we've been working for several months on a one-pager asking them to return to the previous rule, because there's a need for us to be able to compete as what we are: a nation, not as part of the U.S., because we would be competing with the likes of 'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer.' We want to shift that conversation in order to venture forward, and we have support from the Puerto Rican members of the academy. If Puerto Rico is able to participate and submit to the Oscars, that has a huge impact on distribution. For example, if your film makes the shortlist, even if it doesn't get nominated, the impact at the box office is enormous. We were in theaters in Puerto Rico for 17 weeks, but after we were nominated for a Goya, we returned to theaters and stayed for a total of 32 weeks. These things are important for the sustainability of our careers, for the dissemination of the work and for the justice we need.